Bangalore - the city popularly referred to as the Silicon Valley of India is where I have the fortune to be living right now. As I decided to take a plunge into the start-up pool and test the deep waters around, I came across the very popular (but hitherto unknown to me) trend of "meetups" and open houses. Since the time I first came to know about these events, I have attended four such events and it's been less than a week! Each had something unique to offer whether in terms of takeaways or things I could now consciously steer away from.
The first one....Earth Day Yoga at UB City:
One of the finest ways to spend Saturday mornings is to wake up at 6 and head to the posh UB City for a free yoga session. It was a nice breezy morning and to add it, the company! I happened to reach out to alumni fro ISB the prior evening to check if he was interested and so it made things easy to have a known face among so many unknowns there. We connected and had an extended conversation about the start-up opportunities out here and he dawned a mentor sort of a role for a newbie in this space. I am deeply grateful to him for all the alumni gyaan and to this day, he has been sending me information about events and groups that would be helpful. Can't thank him enough for this. :) I found a great friend and guide.
The next one I went to was the open house with the Karnataka IT-BT minister Priyank Kharge at the Yourstory office:
A jam-packed auditorium, lots of hustle and bustle and our minister standing in the front ready to brave all sorts of questions from the vibrant entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs or hustlers :) There was lot of energy in the room right from the moment I first entered it. And, it's nothing short of a very pleasant surprise to me to see a legislature reaching out the way Priyank Kharge has been to boost the entrepreneurship spirit of the city. Whether it is in the form of Centers of Excellence, grants or providing a forum to have a dialog wit the government, he has been instrumental in portraying the government's genuine eagerness to support the start-up ecosystem in Bangalore. As he joked, he was the one taking the biggest risk in the room in lieu of the upcoming elections!
It was especially a great revelation that many people are planning to relocate back from countries like the US to pursue their entrepreneurship dream in the city of Bangalore and were up for a POC before they make the final move!
I also found Shraddha (Yourstory co-founder) to be a very charming and candid lady - very comfortable in her banter like on-stage conversations with the minister. Very confident and sure of her space at the launch of the BengaluruStory. The vibes were quite inspiring.
The third one I went to was a BBC World Service sponsored event at the NASSCOM Warehouse:
The event was primarily an accelerator initiative for start-ups to complement media technologies like language translation, especially in the video news domain. It was interesting to note that the audience was more adept with terminologies like bootstrapping than any of the presenters. The awe about the possibilities of the tech start-up ecosystem was quite visible in the presenters.We also had Yourstory co-founder, Ramya, curious about the ways to handle video content in low bandwidth areas. Some coffee, tea, carbonated drinks, cookies and BBC labelled pens were on offer. I noticed most of the Indians picking up the water bottle over a fizz can - health conscious! :)
The fourth one was the Societe General Catalyst 2.0:
Again an accelerator program for technology start-ups whose product offering had some overlap with the tech requirements of the firm. These were in the areas of Predictive analytics, AR/VR, Artificial Intelligence, Data Cleaning, etc. A lot about their presentation reminded me of my stint at Goldman - the awe of having an opportunity to work directly for "the end customer", the highly conservative attitude when it came to data sharing but very crisp with the ask, the timelines, the IP ownership, the contract etc.
It's very clear that large organizations like BBC and Soc Gen have realized that they cannot afford to miss out on the gains from the developments in the Silicon Valley of India. however, by virtue of they being the very large and successful and established global organizations that they are, the hesitation and the rigidity is quite apparent- which they are certainly trying to hide, but it's there and it's very much visible. This is also the reason why I don't feel very certain about moving back to a set up like this and especially in an IB or a global bank set up. But I guess most established firms that offer me a job will be the same....except in some sense the real Strategy/Management consulting giants that allow it's employees to get staffed across multiple projects with a plethora of clients from different industries. That's the only use case where one can hope to get the same experience - So I feel!
Let's see how it turns out for me. For now, I have vowed to myself - I won't give up- ever!
Power to me :)
The first one....Earth Day Yoga at UB City:
One of the finest ways to spend Saturday mornings is to wake up at 6 and head to the posh UB City for a free yoga session. It was a nice breezy morning and to add it, the company! I happened to reach out to alumni fro ISB the prior evening to check if he was interested and so it made things easy to have a known face among so many unknowns there. We connected and had an extended conversation about the start-up opportunities out here and he dawned a mentor sort of a role for a newbie in this space. I am deeply grateful to him for all the alumni gyaan and to this day, he has been sending me information about events and groups that would be helpful. Can't thank him enough for this. :) I found a great friend and guide.
The next one I went to was the open house with the Karnataka IT-BT minister Priyank Kharge at the Yourstory office:
A jam-packed auditorium, lots of hustle and bustle and our minister standing in the front ready to brave all sorts of questions from the vibrant entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs or hustlers :) There was lot of energy in the room right from the moment I first entered it. And, it's nothing short of a very pleasant surprise to me to see a legislature reaching out the way Priyank Kharge has been to boost the entrepreneurship spirit of the city. Whether it is in the form of Centers of Excellence, grants or providing a forum to have a dialog wit the government, he has been instrumental in portraying the government's genuine eagerness to support the start-up ecosystem in Bangalore. As he joked, he was the one taking the biggest risk in the room in lieu of the upcoming elections!
It was especially a great revelation that many people are planning to relocate back from countries like the US to pursue their entrepreneurship dream in the city of Bangalore and were up for a POC before they make the final move!
I also found Shraddha (Yourstory co-founder) to be a very charming and candid lady - very comfortable in her banter like on-stage conversations with the minister. Very confident and sure of her space at the launch of the BengaluruStory. The vibes were quite inspiring.
The third one I went to was a BBC World Service sponsored event at the NASSCOM Warehouse:
The event was primarily an accelerator initiative for start-ups to complement media technologies like language translation, especially in the video news domain. It was interesting to note that the audience was more adept with terminologies like bootstrapping than any of the presenters. The awe about the possibilities of the tech start-up ecosystem was quite visible in the presenters.We also had Yourstory co-founder, Ramya, curious about the ways to handle video content in low bandwidth areas. Some coffee, tea, carbonated drinks, cookies and BBC labelled pens were on offer. I noticed most of the Indians picking up the water bottle over a fizz can - health conscious! :)
The fourth one was the Societe General Catalyst 2.0:
Again an accelerator program for technology start-ups whose product offering had some overlap with the tech requirements of the firm. These were in the areas of Predictive analytics, AR/VR, Artificial Intelligence, Data Cleaning, etc. A lot about their presentation reminded me of my stint at Goldman - the awe of having an opportunity to work directly for "the end customer", the highly conservative attitude when it came to data sharing but very crisp with the ask, the timelines, the IP ownership, the contract etc.
It's very clear that large organizations like BBC and Soc Gen have realized that they cannot afford to miss out on the gains from the developments in the Silicon Valley of India. however, by virtue of they being the very large and successful and established global organizations that they are, the hesitation and the rigidity is quite apparent- which they are certainly trying to hide, but it's there and it's very much visible. This is also the reason why I don't feel very certain about moving back to a set up like this and especially in an IB or a global bank set up. But I guess most established firms that offer me a job will be the same....except in some sense the real Strategy/Management consulting giants that allow it's employees to get staffed across multiple projects with a plethora of clients from different industries. That's the only use case where one can hope to get the same experience - So I feel!
Let's see how it turns out for me. For now, I have vowed to myself - I won't give up- ever!
Power to me :)
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